Political agency of news outlets in a polarized media system:framing the corruption probe in Turkey

Abstract:

This article aims to determine the stances of media outlets during crises in a polarized media system such as Turkey. Adopting a content analysis methodology, this article analyses the framing strategies of three national newspapers affiliated with certain sociopolitical camps (namely, the pro-government Sabah, the anti-government Kemalist Sözcü and the pro-Gülen Zaman) to observe possible similarities/differences during the critical 17 December corruption probe. The findings not only confirm earlier studies on ‘press-party’ parallelism but also reveal ‘press-sociopolitical camp parallelism’ in Turkey’s polarized media system.